John Yoo says President Obama is too afraid of the politics of Guantanamo Bay to capture and interrogate terrorists.

The former George W. Bush administration lawyer, Yoo wrote the infamous torture memos used to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were a central legacy of Bush’s Global War On Terror. He now says that the killing of Osama bin Laden will go down in history as one of President Obama’s biggest national security fails.

Yoo told CNN on Thursday night that the special forces team sent to kill bin Laden should have instead taken him alive and kept him as a source of future intelligence.

…snip…

“If they were going in with no options other than to kill him, then that’s a problem,” Yoo told CNN’s Eliot Spitzer.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Yoo wrote that shooting the unarmed bin Laden meant “one of the most valuable intelligence opportunities since the beginning of the war has slipped through our hands.”

Yoo told Spitzer “that a deliberately small force was sent in” to Abbottabad, Pakistan by the White House because “they don’t want to capture high-level al Qaeda leaders.”

Why? As Yoo said in his op-ed, the administration is terrified of backing the Bush administration’s moves in the war on terror.

“Capturing [bin Laden] alive would have required the administration to hold and interrogate bin Laden at Guantanamo Bay,” Yoo wrote, “something that has given this president allergic reactions bordering on a seizure.”

Watch as Yoo gets his panties in a bunch as Eliot Spitzer takes him apart in the video at the TALKING POINTS MEMO link.

27 responses to “I Hate Yoo!”

i was going to say why does anyone invite him to be on tv, but after watching that interview, i hope that he’ll be on more shows, because most people will see him as the ungracious little asswipe he is. did he think spitzer was going to break down in tears when yoo said he might never do his show again? what an arrogant bastard.

and remember that he has no inside info as to how the decision was made, the planning, and the mission itself. how arrogant to second-guess what too months and months to plan and execute. obama did what chimpy (with yoo’s help) couldn’t, and yoo can’t stand it. he’s still trying to justify his laughable arguments in favor of torture.

I think that this is headed right toward being a party line trope … that Pres. Obama was wrong to have bin Laden killed.

How well do you think THAT is going to play in 2012?

Maybe the Republicans should just take 2012 off. If they can’t do better than this, then there’s really no point. I think that any “weak on defense” or “not taking terrorism seriously” argument ends with “Did you notice that bin Laden is dead?”

i hope the rethugs go with this. i don’t think obl would have given anything up if he had been captured. he’d lie. if the seals had to capture him, that would have cost them the time they used to gather evidence. the stuff on the computers the SEALs took won’t lie. there will be far more reliable info on hard drives than would ever come out of obl’s mouth.

i’m okay with the opponent being any rethug, as long as i still get to see the elbow to the mouth. to tell the truth, i would sorta love to see obama play a game of hoops with mittsie. mittsie would look like such a prissy boy wuss.

Why can’t the torture man understand the party line and just ask W, after he captured OBL, to let him personally have a crack at him. Have him “sent to Eygpt” which would be really swell since the head torturer seems to be running the country now. John might reach the heights of Vlad the Impaler or maybe Shaka Zulu who really had the techniques thing down to a science. He could claim his place in history, even little children would know of Boo Hoo Yoo. And don’t forget Interpol. These bastards from the top down are going to go to the Hague for trial first time they step off a plane in the wrong country.

i don’t remember which show i was watching the other night, but someone remarked that members of the chimpy administration are afraid to travel overseas, for fear of being arrested. there are just a handful of countries they feel safe going to.

Its great to see someone like Spitzer exposed these right wing shit bags for what their worth. He could see right the lies that asshole Yoo was spouting off.
Yoo is pissed off because he thinks like Obama is supposed to run everything by him? Don’t think so.

for anyone even remotely involved with the Bush administration to fault the Obama one for missing using intelligence opportunities is ridiculous.

if anyone cares for a cool, detailed, articulate rundown on Intelligence operations during the Bush years, “the War on Terror” I would humbly like to suggest a post from a blogger in my part of the World. Check

“The team sent in was purposefully small”? Um…no DUH! Guess ol’ Yoo would’ve preferred we landed a 747 or two? (Granted, the compound IS big enough for a few Cessnas.) I do like WKEN’s idea of the GOP taking 2012 off. Maybe a complete joke ticket, like Limbaugh/Beck. (Naw, that wouldn’t work, too many GOPers wouldn’t get the joke….) ;)

that’s the most ridiculous part of yoo’s argument. of course you’d want the least number of people possible. the more people, the less the element of surprise that was so necessary. let the rethugs like him keep on talking. it makes all of them look ridiculous and petty.